Charles IV. resigned the crown of Spain for himself and his heirs, accepting in return from the hands of Napoleon a safe retreat in Italy, and a splendid pension. Godoy, who had entered into the fatal negotiation of Fontainebleau, with the hope and the promise of an independent sovereignty carved out of the Portuguese dominions, was pensioned off in like manner, and ordered to partake the Italian exile of his patrons. A few days afterward, Ferdinand VII., being desired to choose at length between compliance and death, followed the example of his father, and executed a similar act of resignation. Napoleon congratulated himself on having added Spain and the Indies to his empire, without any cost either of blood or of treasure; and the French people, dazzled by the apparent splendour of the acquisition, overlooked, if there be any faith in public addresses and festivals, the enormous guilt by which it had been achieved. But ere the ink with which the Spanish Bourbons signed away their birthright was dry, there came tidings to Bayonne which might well disturb the proud day-dreams of the spoliator, and the confidence of his worshippers.

Not that Napoleon had failed to measure from the beginning the mighty dangers which surrounded his audacious design. He had been warned of them in the strongest manner by Talleyrand, and even by Fouché nay, he had himself written to rebuke the headlong haste of Murat in occupying the Spanish capital-to urge on him the necessity of conciliating the people, by preserving the show of respect for their national authorities and institutions-to represent the imminent hazard of permitting the duke del Infantado to strengthen and extend his party in Madrid-and concluding with those ominous words : Remember, if war breaks out, all is lost.

Ferdinand, before he left Madrid, invested a council of regency with the sovereign power, his uncle,

Don Antonio, being president, and Murat one of the members. Murat's assumption of the authority thus conferred, the departure of Ferdinand, the liberation and departure of the detested Godoy, the flight of the old king-these occurrences produced their natural effects on the popular mind. A dark suspicion that France meditated the destruction of the national independence, began to spread; and, on the 2d of May, when it transpired that preparations were making for the journey of Don Antonio also, the general rage at last burst out.

A crowd collected

round the carriage meant, as they concluded, to convey the last of the royal family out of Spain; the traces were cut; the imprecations against the French were furious. Colonel La Grange, Murat's aid-decamp, happening to appear on the spot, was cruelly maltreated. In a moment, the whole capital was in an uproar: the French soldiery were assaulted every where-about 700 were slain. The mob attacked the hospital-the sick and their attendants rushed out and defended it. The French cavalry, hearing the tumult, entered the city by the gate of Alcala a column of 3000 infantry from the other side by the street Ancha de Bernardo. Some Spanish officers headed the mob, and fired on the soldiery in the street of Maravalles: a bloody massacre ensued: many hundreds were made prisoners: the troops swept the streets from end to end, released their comrades, and, to all appearance, tranquillity was restored ere nightfall. During the night, however, the peasantry flocked in armed from the neighbouring country; and being met at the gates by the irritated soldiery, not a few more were killed, wounded, and made prisoners. Murat ordered all the prisoners to be tried by a military commission, which doomed them to instant death. It is disputed whether the more deliberate guilt of carrying the sentence into execution lies with the commanderin-chief himself, or with Grouchy-it is certain that

a considerable number of Spaniards-the English authority most friendly to the French cause admits ninety-five-were butchered in cold blood on the 3d of May.

This commotion had been preceded by a brief insurrection, easily suppressed and not unlikely to be soon forgotten, on the 23d of April, at Toledo. The events in the capital were of a more decisive character, and the amount of the bloodshed, in itself great, was much exaggerated in the reports which flew, like wildfire, throughout the peninsula-for the French were as eager to overawe the provincial Spaniards, by conveying an overcharged impression of the consequences of resistance, as their enemies in Madrid were to rouse the general indignation, by heightened details of the ferocity of the invaders and the sternness of their own devotion. In almost every town of Spain, and almost simultaneously, the flame of patriotic resentment broke out in the terrible form of assassination. The French residents were slaughtered without mercy: the supposed partisans of Napoleon and Godoy (not a few men of worth being causelessly confounded in their fate) were sacrificed in the first tumult of popular rage. At Cadiz, Seville, Carthagena, above all in Valencia, the streets ran red with blood. The dark and vindictive temper of the Spaniards covered the land with scenes, on the details of which it is shocking to dwell. The French soldiery, hemmed in, insulted, and, wherever they could be found separately, sacrificed-often with every circumstance of savage torture-retorted by equal barbarity whenever they had the means. Popular bodies (juntas) assumed the conduct of affairs in most of the cities and provinces, renounced the yoke of France, reproclaimed Ferdinand king, and at the maritime stations of chief importance entered into communication with * Colonel Napier, p. 25.

VOL. II.-E

the English fleets, from whom they failed not to receive pecuniary supplies, and every encouragement to proceed in their measures. Deputies were sent to England without delay; and welcomed there with the utmost enthusiasm of sympathy and admiration. England could both speak and act openly. Throughout the whole of the enslaved continent the news of the Spanish insurrection was brooded over with a sullen joy.

Napoleon received the intelligence with alarm; but he had already gone too far to retract without disturbing the magical influence of his reputation. He, moreover, was willing to flatter himself that the lower population of Spain alone took an active part in these transactions; that the nobility, whose degradation he could hardly over-estimate, would abide by his voice; in a word, that with 80,000 troops in Spain, besides Junot's army in Portugal, he possessed the means of suppressing the tumult after the first effervescence should have escaped. He proceeded, therefore, to act precisely as if no insurrection had occurred. Tranquillity being re-established in Madrid, the council of Castile was convoked, and commanded to elect a new sovereign: their choice had of course been settled beforehand: it fell on Joseph Buonaparte, king of Naples; and ere it was announced, that personage was already on his way to Bayonne. Ninety-five notables of Spain met him in that town; and swore fealty to him and a new constitution, the manufacture of course of Napoleon. Joseph, on entering Spain, was met by unequivocal symptoms of scorn and hatred; but the main road being strongly occupied throughout with his brother's troops, he reached Madrid in safety.

Lucien Buonaparte, it is understood, received the first offer of this crown; but he did not envy the condition of his brother's royal vassals, and declined the dangerous honour. Murat had expected it, and much resented his disappointment; but Napoleon

did not consider him as possessed of the requisite prudence, and he was forced to accept the succession to the vacant throne of Naples.

Joseph had become not unpopular in Naples, and being a peaceful man, would gladly have remained in that humbler kingdom; but Napoleon no more consulted the private wishes of his subaltern princes on such occasions, than he did those of his generals in the arrangements of a campaign.

On the 24th of July (says colonel Napier), "Joseph was proclaimed king of Spain and the Indies, with all the solemnities usual upon such occasions; not hesitating to declare himself the enemy of eleven millions of people, the object of a whole nation's* hatred; calling, with a strange accent, from the midst of foreign bands, upon that fierce and haughty race to accept of a constitution which they did not understand, and which few of them had even heard of; his only hope of success resting on the strength of his brother's arms; his claims on the consent of an imbecile monarch and the weakness of a few pusillanimous nobles, in contempt of the rights of millions now arming to oppose him."

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